Bombing of Shallal
The Bombing of Shallal occurred on 23 January 1965 during the War over Water when the Israeli Air Force bombed the Syrian water pumping station at Shallal to prevent the Syrian government from blocking the flow of water from the Banias and Hasbani Rivers into the Sea of Galilee. The bombing was made possible by the Mossad agent Eli Cohen's espionage efforts, but he was captured by the Syrian government the next day and executed on 18 May. Background In 1964, President of Syria Amin al-Hafiz hired the Saudi construction magnate Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden to undertake a top-secret project to help Syria defeat its rival neighbor, Israel. al-Hafiz had Bin Laden import agricultural tools from Split, Yugoslavia via Kamel Amin Thaabet's import-export company; unbeknownst to either of them, Thaabet was really an undercover Israeli Mossad agent, Eli Cohen. Cohen believed that the tools were to be taken to the secretive Syrian military base of Shallal in Rif Dimashq Governorate, so he had his Mossad allies in Zurich hide tracking devices in them. In late 1964, he met with President al-Hafiz, who shared his plans with him: Syria would block the flow of the Banias and Hasbani Rivers into Lake Tiberias, which would cut off Israel's water supply. al-Hafiz then offered his old friend Thaabet the position of Deputy Defense Minister, and, after secretly consulting Prime Minister of Israel Levi Eshkol, Cohen/Thaabet accepted the offer. At a meeting with the IDF and Mossad leaderships, Eshkol made plans for an imminent airstrike on the water pumping facility at Shallal to scotch the Syrians' plans. While Cohen's handler Dan Peleg protested that doing so would lead to Cohen being compromised (as only Cohen and a few others knew about the project, which was so secretive that a Saudi Arabian team was brought in to build the facility), Eshkol and Peleg's superior Jacob Shimoni claimed that both the strike and keeping Cohen undercover were possible. Ultimately, they followed the advice of a female Mossad agent, Maya, who advised them to wait until "Thaabet" had accepted the promotion before launching the strike, and then allowing for Syria to win minor victories to boost Thaabet's reputation back in Syria and thus allay any suspicions. Strikes On the evening of 23 January 1965, President al-Hafiz and his wife Zeinab al-Hafiz sat with Thaabet and his fiancee Saliha for a dinner at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, discussing Syria's support for the PLO and Yasser Arafat. However, their conversation was interrupted by the shaking of their dinner table, and Syrian soldiers rushed in to secure the President as Israeli bomber jets passed by overhead. Damascus was placed on high alert for an air raid, but the Israeli jets flew straight past the city and instead dropped their bombs on the facility at Shallal; the President and his companions could see the explosions from the garden of the Presidential Palace. The destruction of Shallal led to Damascus being permanently placed on high alert; it had been on high alert for over a year due to al-Hafiz's paranoia about spies infiltrating the government and military. Aftermath That same night, Cohen returned to his apartment alone and sent Morse Code signals back to Mossad, telling them of the destruction of Shallal and Syria's support for the PLO's Fatah armed wing. However, Cohen did so as his Abu Rummaneh neighborhood's power was shut down to help a routine sweep of illegal electronic signals by a Soviet-manned spy van. The van tracked the signal down to Cohen's apartment, and head of security Ahmed Suidani was alerted to the address. The next morning, Suidani and several Syrian soldiers stormed Cohen's apartment and caught him in the act of sending signals to Israel, and they found him under his bed and captured him. al-Hafiz was enraged by Cohen's betrayal and had all of his associates in Syria rounded up and arrested, while Cohen was publicly executed by hanging on 18 May 1965. Category:Air raids Category:War over Water